FTC Is In Talks With Adobe About the 'Flash Problem'

jamie links to news that the FTC is talking with Adobe about persistent Flash cookies. "Flash isn't actually necessary to watch YouTube videos, but the rest of this article is interesting."

Re:THIS is a summary?

[Daniel Dvorkin]

I believe the problem may have something to do with persistent cookies. I'm not sure why I have this impression ... it's just some idea that came to me out of nowhere ... oh, wait, I know where that idea came from! I read the first goddamn sentence of the summary.

Re:THIS is a summary?

[eL-gring0]

From TFA: "While a browser can remove “normal” HTTP cookies, the privacy controls in a web browser like Mozilla Firefox or Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) Internet Explorer can’t remove Flash cookies, which can only be removed by using two separate services available on Adobe’s web site."

Also: "At least one browser, Google Chrome, now allows users to control the Flash cookies from within their browser’s privacy controls."

I'm ignorant of other browsers' features, being relatively happy with my Firefox/Adblock/Noscript bubble of sanity, but it seems that Mozilla and other developers might push to clean up after more of their plugins' messes. If the plugin makers don't care, at least Google's team seems to. Why can't Firefox by default? Opera? Even IE? I saw no mention of Silverlight in that blurb, but I imagine it can be used for tracking too. Of course, people would actually have to use Silverlight for that to happen.

BetterPrivacy Plugin for Firefox will delete LSO

[Hyperhaplo]

Firefox plugin BetterPrivacy - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6623/ [mozilla.org] - will delete LSOs

It can be set up to automatically delete LSO on browser exit; on a timer (every x minutes/hours/days) or manually

It allows you to set a whitelist (protection list).

It doesn't 'solve' the problem; but in the mean time it at least breaks part of the cycle.

Also: Ghostery - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9609/ [mozilla.org] - helps to stop the problem in the fire place.

Used with Ad Block Plus - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865/ [mozilla.org] - it makes surfing the web much better.

The Wild West era ended when there was no one left to conflict with.. right?

Re:What if the local storage is made zero?

[Anonymous Coward]

I actually did this and it does not work. Many sites are broken (hypem.com to name one of them). An alternative that works fine for me, is rm -rf ~/.adobe ~/.macromedia ; ln -s /tmp ~/.adobe ; ln -s /tmp ~/.macromedia. Since /tmp is cleared at every reboot, I get "session" cookies but never persistent ones. Yay.

Re:What if the local storage is made zero?

[littlewink]

I have read that rm -rf ~/.adobe; mkdir ~/.adobe; chmod 000 ~/.adobe does the trick. Can anybody confirm?

That's not enough on Ubuntu: copies of the same "cookies" are kept also in two other directories:

• .macromedia.flashplayer.(macromedia.com).support.flashplayer.sys
• .macromedia.flashplayer.#SharedObjects.xxxxxx

where xxxxxx is a hashed string.